Impending SEO Scam/Link Building Alert: New Way Links (NewWayLinks.com)
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I apologize to those of you who were looking for Saturday Scribbling, but this is too important not to write about. For those of you who are new to link building and SEO, please be advised to read through this page in its entirety, as it will outline quite clearly why this service is a scam and why you should avoid it at all costs.
I came across this Webmaster Talk thread promoting a “one way links building and exchange program” called New Way Links (or NewWayLinks.com; the name seems to alternate). The concept behind New Way Links is that webmasters that suffer from lack of search engine traffic must be doing so due to low PageRank and the inability to build links. Therefore, New Way Links offers a program whereby webmasters can gain “one way links” simply by linking to 10 other sites per week.
NewWayLinks is a unique way of getting one way links to your site with little effort from the users. All you have to do is register for the program and order the amount of one way links you want with the PR of the links you want. Then, you just have to install 10 outgoing links per week that are the same PR that you ordered. To get the one way links to point to you, you have to provide us with the exact URL of which you installed the outgoing links. Once you have done that, you can start enjoying great SEO and SERP as the one way links point to your site. The only thing we ask is that you put no more than 25 links per URL in order for your site to grow in an organic manner.
It sounds really good, doesn’t it? Just put some links on a page every week and then other pages link to yours in turn. What a wonderful concept, right? Wrong. Here’s why New Way Links is a complete scam service, and will inevitably get webmasters who participate in it into severe trouble at some point.
Conflicting Refund Policy
On both the opening page and the Webmaster Talk post, New Way Links promises a 30-day money back “guaranty” (sic). However, the FAQ (screen capture here) reveals a much different story. Please note that the only edit that I have made to the screen capture is to highlight the conflicting phrase in question.
The links provided by Newwaylinks.com are 100% permanent and are not subject to removal even after cancellation of membership that is why we can not refund your money.
If I were a betting man, I’d bet that anyone who wanted a refund within the first 30 days would receive a polite but firm email telling them where they can insert their refund request; it might also be in a similar location of the location from which pickles sometimes need to be surgically removed.
Conflicting Cancellation of Service Information
According to New Way Links, the links provided are permanent links and thus website owners are ineligible for refunds. However, the FAQ immediately below the “no refund policy” states:
If I could not pay my monthly membership fee on time how can I reestablish my participation with the program?
With all respect to our clients we have established a subscription membership with pay-pal which will automatically charge monthly fees. If we receive notification from pay-pal that you have canceled your subscription then we will suspend your privileges to uses our services.
In order to suspend service privileges, all links to the site belonging to non-renewing member would have to be removed; otherwise, the member still receives service privileges. However, the links are permanent, as stated in the “no refund policy”, and therefore the member would still receive service privileges.
The Links a Participating Webmaster Receives Aren’t One Way Links
The links a participating webmaster receives would be N-Way links, where N is a variable representing the number of links from Page A to Page B to Page C and so on and so on back to Page A. This could result in 2-way link exchanges, 3-way link exchanges, 4-way link exchanges, etc., but at some point a circular connection will be created, and this does leave a footprint.
One-way links are links that a page receives from other webmasters without any reciprocal requirements, and usually come from quality content. For example, the links that I provide in my posts to various subjects are one-way links.
Detraction from the User Experience, and Website Owners Have No Control Over What They Link To
The 10 outgoing links per week that a participating site will need to provide are.supplied by New Way Links, and therefore the website owner will not be able to select the links that will be of maximum benefit to the end user. The website owner has to add 10 links, and only 10 links, every week, regardless of quality, relevance, or usefulness to the end user.
This also leads to the possibility that website owners could link to “bad neighborhoods”; website owners that participate in these schemes often have a tendency to try other, more potentially harmful, tactics to get search engine traffic. This leads to increased likelihood that those website owners will get caught, their sites will be penalized, and by extension any sites that will link to those sites will be penalized as well.
Link Exchange is Based on External PageRank
All participating sites will exchange links based solely on Google’s external PageRank metric. Since external PageRank is updated infrequently, it becomes a useless metric for the valuation of quality of a link and therefore cannot be used as a quality indicator whatsoever.
Violation of Google Terms of Service
From Google’s Link Schemes page:
Your site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity. However, some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results. Examples of link schemes can include:
- Links intended to manipulate PageRank
- Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
- Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (”Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)
- Buying or selling links
New Way Links Doesn’t Participate in Their Own Program
From the New Way Links FAQ page:
Why doesn’t NewWayLinks.com participate in the program?
In order to achieve the best results and maintain customer confidentiality, NewWayLinks.com does not participating in the network. We want to make sure that under no circumstances our clients shall be visibly associated to us. That makes our program completely secured for best results.
Under the ruse of “customer confidentiality”, New Way Links refuses to participate. For those of you who believe this statement to be true, consider this: if New Way Links were to participate in their own scheme, the links that they would provide would be obvious direct and indirect links to those trying to manipulate search engines via this scheme. If the scheme were legitimate, then New Way Links providing an additional link would help their customers, as each customer would receive an additional inbound link. So why don’t they? Perhaps it’s because they’ve got something to hide.
Low Cost for a Search Engine to Determine Participants
For the low cost of $25 per month, plus a few hours of labor to set up a fictitious website to participate, a search engine could participate in the link scheme for a few months, gathering valuable information on who is participating and how the links are structured. This information could, in turn, be used to algorithmically or manually penalize and/or ban participants in the scheme. $25 per month + the cost of labor wouldn’t be a significant investment for a search engine to improve the quality, and a company such as Google, MSN or Yahoo! may find justification in spending the money to improve the quality of the engine.
Conclusion: Do Not Subscribe to New Way Links
New Way Links is nothing more than a get-rich-quick scheme ($25 x 10,000 websites per month = $250,000 per month) created without webmasters’ or users’ best interests at heart. Its sole purpose is to manipulate search engines in an unethical and potentially dangerous manner, and I strongly advise all webmasters to stay away from this and other similar schemes. Focus on your content, and building a site for your users, and the search engine traffic (as well as other traffic from other sources) will come.
September 9th, 2007 at 1:44 am
And what is so “New Way” about it? Just another link farm, probably slightly differently structured, but that’s all.
Yuk!
September 9th, 2007 at 3:42 am
It’s creatively structured for a link farm. Instead of 10,000 blogger accounts and a madlib spambot to fill them, these guys are taking advantage of sites that are already out there, exploiting the owners.
What you said about “bad neighborhoods” has a potential for a domino effect. One site becomes associated with known spammers and taint themselves, over their weekly assignment, then next week ten more fall, then ….
A friend of mine returned software he opened to REI. He couldn’t agree to the TOS because of a clause that wasn’t printed on the box. They were happy to give him his money back … and he’s been a good customer, keeping everything else they sold him. If “New Way Links” has a return policy that reads “up yours,” that means you just can’t do business with them. This suggests that if they can extract any more money from you, they will, by any means possible.
Your boxer friend should join their program, if they let you choose the anchor text, and ask them to make this post rank #1 for “New Way Links.”
Oh, and if the customer has to put out 45 outbound links a month for only $25, how can that possibly be called “one way?”
September 9th, 2007 at 11:47 am
Interesting how he’s suddenly quiet, now that he’s been outed.
I don’t think this is something Peter should join, though. Peter doesn’t like to spend money on anything other than booze and hookers (you know, not wasting his money and all that.)
September 10th, 2007 at 2:37 am
They have hookers in Canada? Well, other than Vancouver and Montreal, I guess? I’m not saying Toronto isn’t a real city, just that I haven’t been there, so obviously it must not be an important city… But hey, if Peter can find them, more power to the guy.
Although you’d think a professional boxer turned web design outsourcer would have the ladies fighting over Mr Petera. Does growing up in Manitoba mean a person is uncouth? Or does the attention span thing just put the girls off?
Notice how on their home page it says “Live Help Offline Send Email.” These guys are amazing with the doublespeak.
September 10th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
It is a lot like all of the other schemes out there. I remember many programs like this where you would download a directory each month and upload it as they updated the directory. It was just a huge link farm that everyone would upload each month and it ended up hurting everyone far more than helping them.
Has this company had someone contact you trying to defend their product yet?
Com-
September 10th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Not yet, Com, and I’ve tried the public callout route. Funny how companies like New Way Links clam up when the truth comes out, isn’t it?
They’re going to have to do or say something sooner or later. I’m getting Google referral traffic for the term “New Way Links” now.
September 10th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
Hello,
Adam thank you for posting your feedback about our site, we greatly appreciate it and would like to welcome anyone else to express their opinions about our site and how we can make it better. Also I would like to point out that Adams comments are a perfect example of a how somebody can greatly confuse and misinterpret the workings of our program. Once again thank you Adam, your post has definitely allowed us to take another look at whether we explained how we work clearly enough and in great enough detail.
We would like take the opportunity to clear up Adams confusion and any confusion he might have caused with his Blog posting.
Firstly we provide a service that allows our users to receive links with “relevant” content meaning that we will not just throw you any link we want. We will very carefully match up the content of your site with the content that your incoming link will have. The increase in PR is just the added bonus that you will inevitably receive by using our program. As the new Google guidelines state, PR increases due to relevant links on your site not by how many links you have. Most link exchange schemes fail because the incoming links have no relevance to the site’s content. What we are trying to accomplish with our program is to allow our users to get the kind of relevant content that they want. So this is not some sort of “Scheme” but a genuine idea base on the new requirements by today’s leading search engines.
Adam was very quick to point out the so called “inconsistency” in our Refund FAQ. To clarify his confusion, we offer a completely free trial for the first thirty days if you sign up before the program begins, if you sign up after the program has started then you will have to pay the monthly fee of $25.00. If you signed up after the program has started you will have thirty days to try it out and see if you like it, if you do not you keep the links, get your money back, and that is all. If you decide to cancel your membership after the first 30 days then we will not refund you your money but you will keep the links that we have provided for you.
In reference to the “conflicting” Cancellation of Service Information you have obviously misunderstood what we have stated in our FAQ. If you could not pay your bill on time your membership will be cancelled you will keep the links that you have accumulated up to that point but you will no longer receive any new links, and therefore you will no longer receive our services, it is pretty simple.
The links a webmaster will receive are one way-links, it may be hard for some to figure it out but we have developed an algorithm that makes sure that there will be no cross-linking in our program. Furthermore we have enough volunteer websites to make sure that all the links flow in a one way direction.
One of the main points of our service is that we take the workload of our client’s backs in choosing the links for them. We make it easier and faster to find relevant content for our clients, instead of sitting of hours trying to find the right website and then waste time contacting the owners of the website with which you want to exchange links. We make exchanging links convenient, simple, and fast. The program which we offer will provide out clients with relevant content, not fictitious, or leading to “bad neighborhoods”. As we clearly stated sites which are listed in bad neighborhoods are not even allowed to register and thus will not be used in the program. Also it would make absolutely no logical sense for us to provide poor, irrelevant, and harmful links to our clients, unless we wish to lose them and give a bad name to our service.
Our program in no way violates the Google Terms of Service. We do not provide links that we have pulled out of thin air. We do not provide links to web spammers or to bad neighborhood websites because as stated earlier they are not even allowed to participate in the service. We are not providing excessive link exchanges on the contrary we are providing a medium that grants easier access to relevant content in small amounts every week which will help people grow their websites.
Newwaylinks.com does not participate in the program because to insure confidentiality of our clients, many webmasters and SEO companies don’t want to show their clients how and from where they will receive incoming links for their clients. As we know that SEO process is based 80% on a link building campaign. Many Web development companies charge extra money from the client for the link building process that is why new way link doesn’t participate in the program.
Neither do we nor should our clients have anything to fear from the search engines. We are not running a scam, nor are we breaking search engine regulations. We are simply providing a new method in Link exchange. As anything else that was ever new we do not expect people to believe us right away but we do welcome you to try it out for thirty days. If you do not feel like you have gotten what you paid for then we will refund you your money and thank you for participating, it is as simple as that. There are no gimmicks and you don’t have to download anything to your computer. While our competitors are quick to criticize us we do appreciate the opportunity they have created for us to further explain how our program works. We made link exchanging simple, cheap, easy to use, and that is why we are totally revolutionary. Try it out and then you be the judge.
September 11th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Thanks for the much more polite response than I ever would have imagined. Especially after seeing another blogger friend get railed by a psycho online. But I need to point out two things in your lengthy reply:
“Most link exchange schemes fail because the incoming links have no relevance to the site’s content.”
No, they fail because they’re link exchange schemes.
“The links a webmaster will receive are one way-links, it may be hard for some to figure it out but we have developed an algorithm that makes sure that there will be no cross-linking in our program.”
If you require your paying customers to put up 10 outgoing links a week, then no, you’re just NOT selling one-way links. To get a link TO a person’s site, they have to give links FROM their site, and pay you. That’s not one-way linking. That’s an exchange scheme. You may feel like you’ve figured out a way to trick Google about that for a while, but you’re not fooling people. If I have to give a link to get a link, that’s not one-way. It’s quid-pro-quo.
Sorry, a third thing, but this would really come under the above point.
“We make exchanging links convenient, simple, and fast.”
If you can’t decide whether you’re selling one-way links or a link exchange, then take the overwhelming consensus to heart. It’s an exchange, NOT one-way.
September 11th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Sorry, two more things stand out:
* “As we clearly stated sites which are listed in bad neighborhoods are not even allowed to register and thus will not be used in the program.”
There’s no list of what Google considers bad neighborhood sites. At least there’s no list outside of Google, that the public can check.
* “There are no gimmicks and you don’t have to download anything to your computer. While our competitors are quick to criticize us we do appreciate the opportunity they have created for us to further explain how our program works.” Adam doesn’t compete with you.
And downloading software is only one way to get screwed. Being forced to make 40 outbound links a week and paying $25 a month for purportedly one-way links, um, I’d rather be stuck with the software.
September 11th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Well put, John. I don’t have a thing to add to that.
If anyone had any doubts about New Way Links, that should definitely take care of them.
September 11th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Funny. Because I know you’re such a dedicated fan of rank checking, I went and did just that. I know, I know, you should really be doing this at least 6 to 8 times a day, and ideally 12 or more. Really that’s your job, I just wanted to look over your shoulder.
Google says you’re #3 for New Way Links and #1 for newwaylinks.com.
Hopefully ADAM Web Design won’t take this the wrong way, but if a major link broker can’t outrank a piss-ant Canadian blogger (again no offensive Adam!), there’s no reason anyone should pay them $300 and 520 links a year for their services. Based on the results I see, I’d pay Adam for his services but not New Way Links. And the irony of it all is that Adam doesn’t even do this kind of thing.
There REALLY IS a magic silver bullet, and it’s a secret. All you have to do to rank well is put out useful stuff. Comparing this blog post to the site itself and where they both land in Google proves that beyond any shadow of a doubt.
September 11th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Offense? That’s about the best possible thing you could have said about all of this, John. No offense taken at all!
Once again, I’m not going to add a thing to this. What the hell could I possibly say that would make this any clearer?
Merci, John. New Way Links…consider your ass educated.
September 12th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
[...] will be a brief post, because the details have been covered already on “Walk on My Path’s” expose on New Way Links. Anyone who’s read 1984 will enjoy the doublespeak in “New Way’s” [...]